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2006 Northeast Modern Language Association Panels |
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Randall Van Schepen
"Sacred Invocation in Modernist Art Criticism"
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This paper proposes that current invocations of the "spiritual" in criticism parallel those dating from mid-twentieth century modernism in that they both stem from the anxieties produced by features of advanced processes of modernization. While its boldness on the subject is surprising, recent cultural criticism about "the spiritual" is a continuation of rather than break from such interests in modernist criticism. This paper seeks to explore the late-twentieth century roots of spiritual language in art criticism using a range of references in the writing of Clement Greenberg and especially in that of Michael Fried, two of the prime defenders of modernist art in the twentieth century. Perhaps the penultimate moment of this invocation of the spiritual in modernist art criticism is in the tag line of Michael Fried notorious essay, "Art and Objecthood" (1967), a diatribe defending a purer version of modern painting against the onslaught of Minimalism, "presentness is grace." While traditional accounts of modern criticism suggest that modernism in the arts concentrated on medium specificity and principles of abstraction, upon closer view, one finds that it instead consistently invoked spiritual association to justify modern art. One could say, therefore, that while the contemporary interest in the divine or spiritual may be motivated by events that are as immediate and particular as terrorist attacks, this interest should also make us aware that such concerns were present in the modernist criticism that often provides a foil for such contemporary discourse. To be surprised at the recent interest in "the spiritual" in political, social and critical spheres is to ignore a deeply embedded history of such interests. The interest in the sacred and divine in recent criticism signaled in Zisek, Derrida and others comes after a period of postmodern inquiry that was decidedly hostile to any such endeavor. In its explicit program of secularization, postmodernism continued modernism's stated objective of universalism through objective means, further destroying the remaining hierarchies of modern aesthetic philosophy. But postmodern discourse also opened up a space for the spiritual in this relativist critical sphere. While current critical interest in the sacred may be spurred on by contemporary anxieties about the limits of science and the rise of terrorism, our post-postmodern critical environment attempts to reinvigorate itself by rediscovering the taboo subject of spirituality. A close study of modernist criticism, however, reveals that such concerns were never far from the surface, even in work that professed to provide something other than a metaphysical justification for art. Ironically, while criticism in the late twentieth century attempted to dismantle modernism's remaining meta-narratives or "illusions" in order to proceed into the relativistic hyperspace of the global market and integrative technologies, many people remained firmly convicted of their faith commitments, seeing the promises of postmodern capitalism as an impending threat rather than a promised land. Indeed, in this regard, the polar ends of the political spectrum are alike in their condemnation of the instrumental use of capital economies to turn the globe into a vast and controllable market. The reintroduction of spiritual themes into contemporary criticism is partly motivated by the current desire to understand the commitments of political factions that have risen to political prominence, but more significantly indicates a deeper process of remembering than the amnesia of modernism allowed.
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